So rather than make you come right out and beg, they have their own little Thunderdome for funding called Seed Oregon:

Nine presenting companies will be selected to compete in the Seed Oregon tournament. Each will have 10 minutes to present their concept to the PubTalk audience, followed by a 10 minute Q&A session. Three companies will compete at each of the the preliminary rounds, with the audience voting for the winning presentations to move to the championship round. The Angel Oregon Selection Committee will serve as judges for the championship round.

The competition is restricted to companies in the Portland metropolitan area who are currently seeking a seed round that is less than $2 million.

If you match those requirements and you’re interested in a little “two man enter one man leave,” consider sending in an application. The first round entry deadline is August 31, 2007.

Portland Internet Astronauts was founded by Darius A. Monsef IV, who is probably best know for COLOURlovers. It’s purpose? To bring together local Portland online entrepreneurs to share ideas:

This is a group for the creative people building and running online start-ups. It is a group to get together to talk about our new ideas, share development & design resource and tips, and talk about the latest developments in web technology.

The next Portland Internet Astronauts get together will be held August 16 at 7 PM in the Urban Grind in the Pearl. Seating is limited to 20 attendees. To RSVP or get more information, visit the group’s Meetup page.

For those that attended and want to participate in a post mortem on the event, the PDX PHP group is hosting an OSCON 2007 recap at CubeSpace on August 14.

As many of you know PDXPHP had a booth at OSCON. We met lots of interesting folks and learned about many intriguing projects. Come down to our August meeting and share what you learned at OSCON or learn what was shared at OSCON.

The Portland PHP Users Group is a community forum for people to share, meet and learn about PHP and Open Source technologies. The group strives to be a valuable resource for anyone interested in PHP regardless of their skill level or background. Through sharing and communication we believe we can foster a creative and successful community of PHP developers.

Digital identity promoter Scott Kveton will talk about his experience with OpenID and the future of digital identity on the web. He worked at JanRain (creators of MyOpenID) as CEO and helped it reach Business 2.0’s list of Startups to Watch. Now Scott consults and speaks on identity and open source.

To RSVP, visit Upcoming. For more information on Portland Web Innovators, see the PDXWI site.

The Portland meetups are intended to be a little less intense and more frequent than a full BarCamp Portland event. The intent is to get a group of cool people interested in technology together to chat over drinks on the fourth Thursday of every month. Anyone working in high-tech is welcome to attend. Conversations usually range from wikis to open source to blogs to who knows what!

In any case, it’s happening in Portland, September 6. And paying $495 will surely lead you to a deeper understanding of the concept than I’ve been able to garner with my quick gloss and snarky comments.